Ars Technica System Guide: September 2008 Edition

The kids are headed back to school, which means that it's time for an upgrade …

The God Box

Motherboard

Asus DSEB-DG

The God Box is traditionally divided between workstation-class über-rigs and gaming-oriented builds that don't need dual sockets. We prefer the former approach, ending up with a system that has few equals in the desktop space. Those with less ambitious expectations, or who are pure gamers, will probably want to look at Intel X48-chipset single-socket motherboards, like the Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 or the Asus Rampage Formula, for quad-core CPU and Crossfire support. If you prefer to go Intel and SLI, nForce 780i and nForce 790i boards such as the eVGA 132-CK-NF79-A1 work fairly well. The Crossfire-capable MSI K9A2 Platinum or the SLI-capable Asus M3N-HT are excellent choices for AMD builders.

For the workstation-class God Box we prefer, the Intel i5400 (Stoakley) chipset-based boards with a pair of 1333mhz or 1600mhz FSB 45nm quad-core Xeons make the most sense, offering the most performance available on a proven, reliable, high-performance platform. AMD's quad-core Opterons continue to lag behind Intel's Core 2-based Xeon parts in performance, and will stay there at least until the next major revisions to AMD's Opteron line-up roll out.

Finding the right motherboard is difficult, although with AMD retaking the graphics performance crown from NVIDIA this summer, at least we don't have to worry about SLI support. Intel's Skulltrail platform via the BOX5400XS motherboard is the only viable solution for dual Xeons and consumer-grade NVIDIA cards in SLI, but it runs hot, has only four memory slots, and contains a host of other less-than-ideal compromises. Other Stoakley-based boards, such as the Supermicro X7DWA, Tyan S5396AR, and Tyan S5397WAG2NRF look better than Skulltrail, although they lack enough free PCIe slots for our tastes once you throw in a pair of double-wide graphics cards. This limits our dual quad-core, 16GB+, loaded-to-the-brim-with-PCIe box to only a handful of boards, particularly the Asus Z7S WS and the Asus DSEB-DG, unless you step down to a PCI-X SAS RAID card.

It's tough to choose between the two, but we go with the Asus DSEB-DG. After long delay, this board is finally available in retail channels. Dual LGA771 sockets for Intel Xeons, eight DDR2 FB-DIMM slots for up to 64GB of memory, two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, one PCIe x8 slot, two PCI-X slots, and one PCI slot. Add in eight SATA 3.0Gbps ports, one IDE port, quad gigabit Ethernet ports, and all kinds of goodies and you have a very nice board.

The Asus Z7S WS might actually be a slightly better choice, trading the second PCI-X slot for a PCIe x1 slot, two internal SATA ports for eSATA ports, and add onboard Firewire. Individual builders will have to make the call, as the Z7S WS is also short two FB-DIMM slots and doesn't fit our CPU heatsinks of choice.

Processor

Two Intel Xeon X5482 (OEM)

Intel's continuing updates to their processors keep them on top in the God Box. Faster clock speeds and bigger caches (6MB per pair of cores rather than 4MB) backed up by faster front side bus (FSB) speeds, plus reduced power consumption means there are lots of things to like. Quad-core, 3.2GHz, 2x6MB L2 cache, and up to 1600MHz FSB—it all adds up to best-in-class performance for most applications, as Intel's Core micro-architecture is very good, although the 150W TDP (Thermal Design Power) is slightly frightening.

If you can wait to build your God Box, the coming weeks will see more of those continuing updates in the form of a new E-stepping core. This will deliver a faster 3.4GHz X5492 (150W TDP) part at the top of the line, a cooler X5482 part with a lower 120W TDP, and two other new Xeons.

Heatsink

Two Thermalright HR-01X heatsinks

Going with retail boxed processors would be much more convenient, but we do what we must do. The Thermalright HR-01X are some of the few high-performance aftermarket heatsinks available for Xeons, but as they're very good performers according to Xbitlabs, we have no complaints.

Due to their large size, you'll need to make sure they fit your motherboard and case, but that shouldn't be an issue here. If you choose to go with the Asus Z7S WS, you may have to do some modification.

Two Scythe Kama PWM 120mm fans (DFS122512L-PWM)

Some chassis may provide enough airflow for God Box builders to omit CPU fans, but we play it conservative here. A wide selection of quality fans from Scythe, SilenX, Arctic Cooling, Nexus, and others are available in varying airflow and noise combinations to suit almost any need. With such capable heatsinks, we can go with fairly low-flow fans and not worry about cooling.

The Scythe Kama PWM is a 120mm fan that flows up to 52.71CFM at 24.89dBA and is equipped for pulse-width modulation control (PWM), as commonly found on modern motherboards for fan speed control, making it an excellent choice for the God Box.

RAM

Four Kingston 4GB (2x2GB) ECC DDR2-800 FB-DIMM kits

With very ambitious desktop builders going to 8GB of memory, any God Box worthy of the name should be running at least 16GB, if not more. 16GB+ is made possible by the return of workstation-class chipsets and motherboards to the God Box. This allows the most complex of datasets to be loaded, or maybe just ridiculous multitasking for egomaniacs.

Serious memory hogs may want to look at using 4GB DIMMs to pack in even more, but we figure 16GB is very reasonable. Putting in eight DIMMs allows us to maximize bandwidth available with the i5400 chipset, too.

For more gaming-class God Boxes, loading up with 8GB of DDR2-1066 or faster makes more sense, so we recommend 2GB DIMMs from Corsair, GeIL, Mushkin, Crucial, or others. High-end gamers who are comfortable overclocking their system to the very limit on DDR3-based motherboards, such as the eVGA 132-CK-NF79-A1, will find that at high frequencies (1800mhz+), fast DDR3 or veryfast begins to show a real performance gain over the fastest DDR2, although running four loaded DIMMs at such high speeds is a serious challenge for most memory controllers.

Video

Two Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB

This update brings a tremendous increase in computational power to the God Box. Compared to the last update's workstation-class NVIDIA Quadro FX 4600 cards, the new AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2's individual RV770 GPUs are more powerful and there are twice as many of them per card—and we pack two of these cards into the God Box. Even the fastest single-chip Quadro FX 5600 pales compared to this kind of processing power.

This doesn't mean NVIDIA has been sitting still; the Quadro FX4700 X2 is NVIDIA's dual-chip previous generation answer, while we have yet to see NVIDIA's newest GT200 chips make an appearance in NVIDIA's workstation line-up. Unfortunately for NVIDIA, AMD's RV770 more than holds its own against the GT200, and when crammed into a dual-GPU single-card setup that's free of NVIDIA's asinine SLI-chipset restrictions, it makes AMD the easy choice in the God Box. Faster and cheaper? Sign us up!

Such graphical power does have a few conditions attached; cramming two powerful graphics processors in any system may not be too bad, but cramming four of them means you have to be careful in more ways than one. Power consumption and cooling are huge issues; dealing with 200W, 300W, or even 400W from a multi-GPU setup from AMD or NVIDIA is challenging enough, but a Radeon HD 4870 X2 consumes 260W according to Xbitlabs, and we have two of them. Yikes. Finding a case that fits and cools such a setup also requires some thought, and so does the choice of motherboards.

The real issue is the lack of additional real-world performance beyond two GPUs. The geek lust in us compels us to put two Radeon HD 4870 X2's into the God Box—after all, the performance and the value is incredible compared to previous God Box setups—but an important reality is that both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs do not yet scale well past two GPUs, as Techreport elegantly shows. In many cases, a dual-GPU setup, be it a pair of NVIDIA Geforce GTX280's or a pair of Radeon HD 4870's (or a single Radeon HD 4870 X2, which generally offers identical performance) scales better than a three or four GPU setup.

Future drivers from NVIDIA and AMD no doubt will improve multi-GPU scaling beyond two GPUs, but at least for now, these performance limitations are something to consider. Seriously consider.

For God Boxes where gaming is not a high priority, a single Radeon HD 4870 or Radeon HD 4870 X2 may still be a good bet. On the NVIDIA side, the Geforce GTX280 is fast but expensive, while the Geforce 9800GTX+ competes with the Radeon HD 4850.

The Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 X2 (100251SR) has 2GB of GDDR5 memory at 900mhz (1GB for each RV770 GPU) and a 256-bit memory bus for each GPU, resulting in 230.4GB/s of combined memory bandwidth, a 750mhz core clock for each GPU, two dual-link DVI ports, and a lot of performance.

Sound

Asus Xonar D2

Soundcards are a dull area for gamers. Creative's EAX has a virtual lock on hardware 3D acceleration, although Windows Vista's API changes have somewhat loosened this stranglehold. Asus uses the competing C-media Oxygen HD processor and a fairly effective software implementation that intercepts EAX calls, although how well Creative will let Asus play on their turf is still up in the air. Suffice it to say that for gaming, X-fi-based cards, such as the Creative X-fi XtremeGamer or Auzentech X-fi Prelude, are the primary game in town, with Asus' Xonar D2 and PCIe x1 Xonar D2X being the only real competition.

High quality but less-gaming-oriented cards, such as the Bluegears b-Inspirer and Auzentech X-Meridian, used to be common alternatives for God Boxes who find they can live without current EAX support, but Asus seems to have made an exclusive deal with C-Media that has endangered the rest of the CMI-8788-powered competition.

We used to recommend a more professional-level card such as the M-Audio Delta 1010LT for additional input/output flexibility and better sound quality, but that recommendation seems to be of limited use for most God Box builders.

While imperfect, the Asus Xonar D2 is our choice in the God Box. Pure gamers may want to stick with a genuine X-fi-based card, but the Asus Xonar D2 offers very, very good quality audio performance and has the specifications to back it up, including a 118dBA signal-to-noise ratio, a mix of 24-bit Burr-Brown and Cirrus Logic D-A and A-D converters, sample rates/resolutions up to 192KHz at both 16-bit and 24-bit, and both S/PDIF in and out. Keep in mind that for optimal DS3D GX support, God Box builders will want to grab the latest beta drivers from Asus' site.

Communications

None—on-board

In the God Box, we expect nothing less than gigabit Ethernet, and today's onboard implementations cover this area very well. If more is needed, Intel's Pro/1000MT is an excellent single-port choice.

Wireless solutions such as 802.11n, Bluetooth, and other technologies may have their place in the God Box as well, but they are not yet must-haves. Wired 10Gig Ethernet is also a good ways away from the desktop, so we don't need to worry about that.

Cost: n/a

Serial-Attached-SCSI card(s)

Adaptec 5805 SAS RAID controller

With the Asus DSEG-DB and Asus Z7S WS, we finally have some motherboard choices that will let us use a high-end SAS RAID controller along side our pair of double-wide video cards, instead of being saddled with older, less-capable cards.

The 3ware 9690SA series, Areca ARC-1680ix series, and Adaptec 5000-series are the top performing SAS RAID cards available today, featuring dual-core hardware processors; in the case of the ARC-1680ix and Adaptec 5000-series, this means Intel's formidable IOP348 at 1200mhz. All appear to be excellent cards with screaming performance in RAID1, RAID0, RAID5, RAID6, and various other RAID levels, but Adaptec seems to offer the best driver support at the moment.

We recommend the Adaptec 5805, which supports up to eight directly attached SAS or SATA disks (for some expansion!), has 512MB of memory onboard, and has superb performance, thanks to the Intel IOP348 1200mhz onboard in multiple RAID levels.

Individual God Box builders will probably know their specific needs more closely; the 12-port Adaptec 51245 may actually be a better choice if somewhat more expansion is needed, and a God Box that omits SAS entirely in favor of SATA is also well within the realm of possibility. For a God Box that is a storage monster, Adaptec and Areca offer versions of their SAS RAID cards with up to 24 ports.

Hard drive(s)

Two Fujitsu MBA3300RC 15K 300GB SAS

The latest flash drives are looking faster and faster. Tech Report and Anandtech give a thorough look at the Intel X25-M solid state disk (SSD), and it shows a very promising future for SSD's. However, that is the future—although it may be right around the corner—and in the present, SSD's aren't quite ready for the God Box. While prices and performance are entering God Box territory, SSD's are still pricey, especially in sizes that would make for a comfortable boot drive for the God Box. Soon, though....

Today, conventional harddisks such as the Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB are arguably the better choice for the God Box, offering best-in-class performance for 10K drives, only outdone by the fastest 15K SAS disks, such as the Seagate Cheetah 15K.6 and Fujitsu MBA3 series—and even that may vary depending on the application.

Fuijtsu's top of the line MBA3 series hard disks retain their place in the God Box, with a 300GB capacity, 3.4ms seek time, 16MB buffer, and 3Gbps transfer rate—they are about as fast a mechanical disk as you can buy today. We recommend two in RAID1 for even higher read performance and some additional fault tolerance.

Four Samsung Spinpoint F1 RAID 1TB (HE103UJ) SATA

We bow to the realization that the God Box needs a couple of terabytes of storage in today's world. Sticking with 10K and 15K SAS drives such as Seagate's Cheetah 15K.6 450GBs, makes sense for those who need the highest performance and reliability from their disk arrays, but most God Box users simply need lots of storage more than they need the ultimate I/O performance provided by 15K or 10K SAS disks.

Seagate's new Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB steals away the capacity crown from its 1TB competition. We expect follow-ups from Western Digital, Hitachi, and Samsung in the next few months.

All of the major players have disks in the 1TB market, although finding suitable SATA disks for RAID use means things tend to cost a little more than their consumer-marketed brothers. Hitachi's latest Deskstar 7K1000.B and Seagate's newly-revised Barracuda 7200.11 1TB (ST31000333AS) both sport increased performance over their earlier 1TB predecessors, thanks to higher density platters and other improvements, but updated versions of their nearline versions, the Deskstar E7K1000 and Barracuda ES.2, respectively, are not yet available. Western Digital's brand-new Caviar Black 1TB (WD1001FALS) and nearline-oriented RE3 1TB (WD1002FBYS) are both available, but the RE3 has yet to be verified for compatibility by Adaptec.

The Samsung Spinpoint F1 RAID Class (HE103UJ) crams 1TB and a 32MB cache into a standard 3.5" one-inch disk. Four of them attached to the SAS RAID controller in RAID5 leads to a tidy 3TB of usable storage, and these disks are on Adaptec's compatibility list, which is always good for peace of mind. Until the appearance of the Western Digital Caviar Black, the Samsung F1's were often considered the fastest 7200rpm harddisks on the market, so God Box builders do not have to worry about sacrificing too much performance.

Optical drives

LG GGW-H20L

Blu-ray has won the format war. LG's GGW-H20L is perhaps the nicest of the Blu-ray writers currently on the market, surpassing Sony's BWU-200S. If you have no desire to burn to Blu-ray, save your money and buy a Sony PS3, which is arguably the best Blu-ray player on the market.

This is the God Box, and the ability to read and write to Blu-ray is nice. At up to 50GB/disc currently, it's also vaguely decent for backup, far more useful than DVD-DL's 8.5GB.

The LG GGW-H20L is a 6x Blu-ray burner, 16x DVD+R, 40X CD-R, 4MB cache, and has a SATA interface.

DVD±/CD-RW: Pioneer DVR-216D

The recently discontinued Samsung SH-S203N and Pioneer DVR-216D are the current favorites among those picky about drive performance, although they have plenty of competition from Lite-On, LG, Optiarc (Sony NEC), Asus, etc. Even for the most picky, performance differences are academic most of the time, so buy what you like. We switch to the Pioneer in this update, as the Samsung SH-S223F doesn't seem to be quite as good as its predecessor, or the current Pioneer for that matter.

The Pioneer DVR-216D supports DVD reads and writes up to 20x, CD reads up to 40x, has a 2MB cache, and a SATA interface.

Other media

No recommendation

How to back up data has always been a problematic question for home users. Disk-to-disk backup, even on external 1TB disks, is affordable but not particularly expandable. The business solution of tapes is either slow and small in capacity, or unbelievably expensive—even for the God Box.

With several terabytes in the God Box, the prospect of backing it up on a regular basis without an autoloader is frightening. LTO3 tapes are one of the more affordable options (see HP's Ultrium 920 tape drive), but they're expensive and rather small for practical backup at just 400GB native per tape. The larger 800GB LTO4 tapes used in the HP Ultrium 1840 might work, but LTO4 is even more costly (!); even the smaller LTO3 setups are a huge fraction of a typical God Box builder's budget.

Therefore, we skip the recommendation in this update. God Box builders who need serious backup probably already have an idea on what they need and can figure out the details for themselves.

Cost: n/a

Case

Silverstone TJ10

Let's get this out of the way: we're never perfectly happy with the chassis we pick for the God Box. It's impossible for it to exist, because there are so many different, conflicting goals for a potential God Box. Large numbers of hard disks mean lots of heat, vibration, and cabling to deal with, which makes them hard to fit into a small chassis. Low noise means damped side panels, minimizing direct exposure of fans to the outside world, and careful airflow management to keep components cool with a minimum of additional airflow. Dual video cards mean lots of heat, which means more airflow, which means more noise. And on top of all that, it needs to look good at least decent.

These requirements all end up being contradictory at some point.

For capacity and cooling, server-class chassis often work out, but, as a rule, they're generally pretty noisy and not always compelling to enthusiasts. Server-class cube chassis from Chenbro or Mountain Mods are fine examples of what might work. Server-class towers, such as the Chenbro SR10769BK, recently popped up in the Orbiting HQ, but they often aren't set up for PSUs with bottom-mount fans or extra-wide tower heatsinks.

Those wanting low-noise setups should look at the Antec P182 (which is not extended ATX friendly) and its bigger brother, the P190 (which is). The Coolermaster Cosmos merits some attention as well. The Lian-Li A71 and its brethen also work, as does the Silverstone TJ07. Those with more modest needs can look at the other parts of the guide for recommendations, although keep in mind the need for extended ATX motherboard support, two high-end video cards; and five hard drives may not be compatible with the more modest chassis listed there. Not that the God Box is "modest" by any means...

We continue with the Silverstone TJ10B in this update. Low-noise 120mm fans, extended ATX MB support, 4x5.25" and 7x3.5" (6+1 internal/external) drive bays, front-panel audio/Firewire/USB ports, and a pretty decent cooling layout all work in its favor. The TJ10BW version comes with a window, although we don't normally do windows.

Six Scythe Slipstream 120mm fans (SY1225SL12M)

While we would love to go with very-low-flow/very-low-noise fans in the God Box, keeping a box cool that contains over 1kW of power-sucking components is not going to happen short of extraordinary measures.

Yate Loon, Arctic Cooling, Nexus, SilenX, Noctura, EBM/Papst, and others all make a variety of good quality fans suitable for the God Box. We target medium speed models that (predictably) result in medium airflow and medium amounts of noise. You can wire up a fan controller, such as the Zalman ZM-MFC1, if you want a little more control over the fans, but most God Boxes will probably get by without one.

The Scythe Slipstream medium-speed (SY1225SL12M) is rated at 68.54CFM at 24dBA, and spins at 1,200RPM. SilentPCReview found the airflow and noise to be optimistic, but the Slipstream is still an excellent fan. We populate all six fan positions in the Silverstone TJ10 with these and hope it's the right balance of airflow and noise to cooling.

Power supply

Coolermaster Real Power Pro 1250W

Power requirements have always been important, and this becomes even more significant with a pair of dual-GPU video cards that draw more power (260W each) than the average home computer does. Coupled with a pair of high-end quad-core Xeons (rated at 150W TDP each), a full load of FB-DIMMs (call it 8~12W each per Micron), five harddisks (~12W each per Storagereview), plus the motherboard itself, fans, optical drives, and we break a new record for power consumption in the God Box. Previously 750W was enough; now we find ourselves looking at 900W at a minimum for full load, probably closer to 1000W.

Ouch.

Compared to the Hot Rod, which doesn't break 300W, or the typical home box, which is probably well under 100W, previous God Box recommendations are all suddenly inadequate. The Enermax Modu82+ 625W, Corsair HX620, and PCP&C Silencer 750 Quad might power the God Box if it had some slightly lower-end Xeons and only two GPU's inside, but instead, we're now forced to consider power supplies such as the PCP&C Turbo-Cool 1200, Silverstone Zeus ZU1200M, and Corsair HX1000.

We would like to include a redundant power supply in the God Box, but it would needlessly complicate the recommendation, particularly because not all cases play well with redundant power supplies. Quiet PC users would also find themselves deafened, or at least somewhat offended, not that a 1000W or 1200W power supply at full load is going to be quiet... Zippy/Emacs N+1 redundant units are very nice, very reliable, and very expensive, should redundant power supplies be a requirement for your personal God Box.

The Coolermaster Real Power Pro 1250W has better than 84% efficiency, 80PLUS certification, six PCIe graphics connectors, 8 SATA connectors, 7 molex connectors, can deliver up to 93A combined on the +12v rails, and backs it all up with a 5 year warranty. It's also fairly decent as far as noise goes for such a powerful unit, at least until it gets near full load.

APC Smart-UPS 2200

Power protection has to come from a true line-interactive UPS—none of the cheaper automatic-voltage-regulation-only stuff in the God Box. We want sine wave output to keep sensitive components happy and enough capacity to handle lots of expansion. You can keep your God Box protected, from the box itself to the monitor to—well, almost everything else attached to the God Box (except a laser printer!) on a UPS this large.

Belkin, TrippLite, Liebert, and others make excellent units as well. TrippLite, in particular, may be a better value, but for now we will stick with APC to keep the recommendation simple.

The APC Smart-UPS 2200 (SUA2200) has a 2200VA capacity (1980W maximum load) which should give a few minutes of runtime to a God Box in the middle of a hyperactive gaming session, although we recommend powering down as soon as possible instead of trying to game through a power outage. It also has a NEMA 5-20P plug instead of the standard NEMA 5-15P, so keep that in mind. If your household lacks suitable outlets and cannot be wired to support such a UPS, the smaller APC Smart-UPS 1500 will probably barely do the trick (and it has the standard NEMA 5-15P plug), although we would recommend two of them—one for the God Box and one for your monitors and peripherals.

Monitor

Two Dell 3007WFP-HC 30" LCDs

LCDs continue to get more affordable, with constant improvements in color gamut, contrast ratio, and response time appearing in every generation of models. Wide-gamut monitors are no longer a rare exception in the market—several makers are now on their 2nd or 3rd generation of wide-gamut displays. With LCDs being so affordable, dual 24" LCDs are no longer the extravagance they once were.

30" displays such as the Apple 30", HP LP3065, Samsung 305T, and Dell 3008WFP are among the top-of-the-line consumer displays available. God Box builders who don't need the massive screen real estate of 30" monitors, and are shopping 24" panels instead, will be interested in the Dell 2408WFP, BenQ G2400Wd, and HP LP2475.

The most color-critical users will be looking at the higher-end Eizo Flexscan SX3031W, Eizo ColorEdge CG301W, NEC LCD3090WQXi, NEC LCD2690WUXi, and their competition, as well as a way to calibrate them. Fortunately, only the very most demanding users will expect this sort of color accuracy.

The Dell 3007WFP-HC has a 12ms response time, a 1000:1 contrast ratio, 300cd/m^2 brightness, and a 2560x1600 resolution. Its newer 3008WFP sibling is available, but doesn't offer a huge advantage in the God Box, and may actually be considerably worse for gaming due to substantially higher input lag.

Speakers

Logitech Z-5500 Digital

Recommendations for computer speaker surround sound setups in the Audio/Visual forum have been a bit thin lately, probably because the selection has gotten pretty dismal. The Altec Lansing FX5051 and Creative Gigaworks G550W 5.1 setups are some of the few around, and they're only decent at best. For 2.0 or 2.1 setups, the Behringer MS40 and M-Audio BX-8A are excellent nearfield monitors that are actually from the home theater segment. Axiom Audio's Audiobyte setup is also a potential candidate from a well-known maker of home theater speakers.

If you are spending this much money on a computer, you probably want something more elaborate in the form of a real home theater setup. We do not feel qualified to give such a recommendation here, although our Audio/Visual forum members would be glad to help. Even the best computer speaker setups cannot compare to a modest, good-quality home theater setup.

Mouse

n/a

Included with the keyboard. See below.

Cost: n/a

Keyboard and Mouse

Logitech Cordless MX 5500

We recommend you buy a keyboard that you like—personal preference reigns here.

Logitech's cordless MX 5500 includes the MX Revolution laser mouse in a complete wireless setup and is a very flexible starting point for the God Box. It doesn't get much more high-end than this, aside from maybe the truly excessive Optimus Maximus.

Many prefer conventional 104-key keyboards. Older "click" models from IBM and others, such as Unicomp, are favorites for many, while some of us prefer quiet units such as Dell's old school Quietkey.

For gaming mice, the cordless MX Revolution may not be ideal. The old school Logitech MX518 is a long time favorite that has held up very well. The Razer Lachesis and Razer Copperhead are also popular choices for gamers.

Total price: $11,968.58, not including shipping and handling (9/11/2008, no OS)

Recommended operating systems

While a computer is not much good without an operating system, these system recommendations are intended to be hardware-only. But do not despair; we have some OS recommendations specially formulated for the God Box. The release of Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista makes us comfortable with recommending Microsoft's newest OS. Interface quirks, driver model changes, and everything else aside, Vista as well as Server 2008 now look to be reasonably solid operating systems.

We also recommend Linux, although some may be surprised that we're fairly distro-agnostic here in the Orbiting HQ.

Windows Vista Business 64-bit

Vista Business adds Aero Glass, and a whole host of additional features, compared to more basic versions of Windows Vista. Combined with the increasing driver support in Vista, and you have a new de facto OS for gamers. Vista Business is as low-end as we can go in the Vista line-up for the God Box, as Vista Home versions do not support dual sockets.

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

The fully loaded edition of Vista brings Aero Glass, Windows Media Center, Windows Complete PC Backup, Remote Desktop Connection, and a host of features not seen in lesser versions of Vista. Hot Rod users may not need all of these features, but they're nice to have.

Windows Server 2008 Standard

The server-flavored edition of Windows Vista is occasionally reported as faster than the desktop version, and driver support so far appears to be excellent, with many cases of Vista drivers working fine in Server 2008. A machine as capable as the God Box is certainly capable of being tasked as a server and tweaked however you need it to be, and Windows Server 2008 Standard is a very good way to do it. The package from Microsoft includes both 32-bit and x64 editions, so you don't have to worry about buying the wrong one to take advantage of the much-greater-than-4GB-of-memory in your God Box.

Windows 2003 Server Standard x64 Edition

Windows 2003 Server is an excellent OS for those seeking to use the full power of the God Box as a server, a server OS for serious users who need the 64-bit support to take advantage of large amounts of memory and 64-bit instructions. Those looking for ultimate performance may wish to consider that the relative maturity of the drivers for this OS is low compared to more established operating systems. Specifically, immature hardware drivers tend to show lower performance than their more mature counterparts.